The Definitive Guide To Not Using a Treadmill Like a Dumbass

When I say I spend a lot of time in gyms/fitness centers I mean every waking, soul stealing moment of my life. Notice I said gyms/fitness centers. Not actual training facilities where goals are met, sweat gets puddled, and work gets down. A common trend among normal gym going health enthusiasts:

99% of them look and weigh exactly the same or worse/heavier than they did when they got their membership.

Ok, I see a little improvement here. When, oh, when will Gamma radiation be available at GNC?



There is no change because they all do exactly the same thing. Get on the treadmill (you know the one with their favorite view of the TV... assuming the TV is not actually attached to the treadmill itself), hit quick start, plug in whatever speed they have been doing for the last 11 months of their gym membership, and plod along for the next 20mins to 6 hours periodically checking heart rate (for some reason?) and calories burned (to justify all of the shit food they plan to cram into their mouth as soon as they get home.

Warning: Just skip this next paragraph to stay on track with the actual point of this thread... I just got really pissed off about something just now:

 

 

Calorie counters... on treadmills/cardio equipment in general. *sigh*. Ok, let's imagine this is actually a helpful piece of information in some magical parallel universe where children ride unicorns to school, everyone is as cool as they sound on the internet, and a calorie is a calorie. You go through an insane 500 calorie burning utter mayhem of a training session (because no one works out in the perfect world, everyone trains). Now you can go right ahead and add in 500 calories of whatever awful mess you've been craving with no ill effects!!!! Wait!!! Since this is the case, you can just never get off the treadmill and eventually you will look like all of those skinny actresses and supermodels that say they jog all the time (google Clenbuterol... Yea... jogging got them skinny). The truth is in this awful nightmare of a real world: the more calories you burn doing slow, long duration, steady state cardio, the more energy you conserve at rest. It has to do with a survival mechanism that kicks in after doing such horrible cardio-related atrocities to your body. Think about 10,000 years ago... hell, think 3,000 years ago, when the majority of humans were hunter gatherers. Burn more calories=get more food or die. Since Super Walmarts and McDonalds were in short supply, access to food usually required a heavy physical effort (chasing and spearing a Mammoth), an even harder physical effort (dragging all 10,000lbs of said dead animal back to the village), and then eating the hell out of the thing. Sprint. Kill. Eat. Conserve? Contrary to popular belief, all forms of exercise cause this conservation phenomenon. So why exercise at all? Because strong muscles=strong bones=strong hands (one of the largest measures of quality of life)=better quality of life. Jogging/cardio eats muscle, burns calories (only to completely stall the calorie burning process once you stop), and causes injuries. Want science? Ok, nerd-ass, keep your lab coat on:

 

Instance of serious injury for competitive weightlifters: .003 out of 100 athletes

Instance of serious injury for high level soccer players: 12 out of 100 athletes (the highest of all team sports).

 

Rant over. I don't even know if I made a point up there. Oh well, I feel better now either way.

 

 

 

So, the treadmill sucks right? Yea pretty much. But, the truth is most people shy away from using the free weights for little more than curls with the little pink dumbbells or bench pressing with horrible technique simply because they don't know what to do or how to use the stuff. Since asking most personal trainers for advice on anything is basically a death sentence, I'll give you some awesomeness that you can do with a treadmill.


1. Sprint Intervals

Warm-up for however long you need to then find a speed on the treadmill that is somewhere around 80% of the fastest you can sprint. Do that for 15 seconds, grab the hand rails, and jump your feet to the sides. Rest for anywhere from 30 seconds to 1 minute, and repeat as many times as feels awesome (start with at least 6-10).

2. You Break It You Buy It

That was my disclaimer for my next suggestion. Find something heavy in the gym and either hold it out in front of you or over your head while you simply walk on the treadmill for a pre-determined amount of time. Shoot for a weight you can hang on to for 10 mins. Sound easy? I thought so too. You get to a point where standing upright and breathing stop being an option. Start light and, for the love of God, don't break the treadmill.

3. Whatever This Is

Or, instead of looking like dumbass like this guy, just don't turn the treadmill on and try to move the tread with your hands for a couple minutes.

4. Variation

Take any of the above and constantly vary the speed, incline, weight used, implement used, hand placement, whatever you can think of. Anytime you change something up it is a new exercise as far as your body is concerned.

No one gets better or looks better with a treadmill because its the same thing over and over and over. Just like your brain learns stuff, so does your body. Imagine starting to read a new book but once you get done with the first page you immediately return to the first sentence and read it all over again. Imagine doing that everyday for an hour for a year straight. Eventually, you'll memorize it, know every word, and just go through the motions of reading that page. Your body does the same thing when you torture it with boredom and slowly kill it through the ill effects of cardio on that moveing death platform of a treadmill.

Variation is the spice of life. Cardio on a treadmill is the burning tire filled with used diapers of life.

Sprint. Kill. Eat. And Nevermind, Break All The Treadmills.

 

The Death To Fitness Super Secret System For Programmed Fat Loss and Target Tonning Sculpter Routine

This is it. I can't stop smashing fitness in the face with a sledgehammer because I will now be joining the ranks of pop-fitness, money hungry, know nothing trainers. I am going to make bank off of peoples insecurities just like the pro's do. I will probably be one of the celebrity trainers on The Biggest Loser next season after I am finished with this one.

I tried to photoshop myself in there next to Bob just so everyone could get an idea of how he and I will look on the show next to each other but there wasn't enough room for my legs, my face looks too fat next to his, and I can't find any shirtless pictures of me. I'll probably need to completely stop lifting weights, being strong, and training everyday in order to not intimidate the little guy. I'll just start doing... whatever it is he is doing here.






So, my program. It is 100% peer-reviewed research based. Actually, it's only based off of one study. That one study, though, showed an average 2.2lb decrease in pure fat over the course of only 48 hours! Amazing. Repeating my protocol twice a week will allow you to SCORCH 4.4 lbs of unsightly pudge every week! This is it, the key, the magic bullet, the x-factor, the body composition game-changer (hopefully I have thrown in enough B.S. jargon to optimize my search engine presence by now... because honestly, I can't think of anything else... oh wait! SHREDDED!!!!!!).

What do you need to (thought of another one, RIPPED, bro. Pecs!!! Abs forever!!!!) have on hand to perform this program is very, very little. The only piece of equipment you need is a bike and a place to ride it. The intensity of the exercise involved is minimal. 48% of V02 max (or a heart rate around 105bpm for most people). The only small, minuscule catch is the duration restraint and distance of the exercise. You need to ride your bike 621 miles in 48 hours. 48 hours! That's a weekend! No big deal. A small sacrifice to make in the epic battle against fat loss. (SWOLE!!!!).


Ok. I'm done. Please don't do this... if you do, feel free to leave your results and ensuing exercise induced medical condition in the comments section below. Some mad scientist somewhere actually made other people do this. Here is a link to the study, the abstract is hilarious:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21722005

Sprint for 1,000 kilometers. Kill yourself. Eat.

Random Thoughts on Stuff That Sucks For You (That Everyone Tells You is Good For You)

It's been a while since I have posted something on here. Sorry about that. Hopefully everyone has not forgot about me and moved on to whatever Dr. Oz is recommending now.

"Now, what you do is, buy 30 pounds of whatever this is a day. You eat 7 pounds of it for breakfast, boil the rest, dump it in a bathtub, and soak in it for 20 hours. Repeat this process everyday for 6 years and, bingo! No more craving sweets!"


What is good for you? Seems like an easy enough question. There are many different answers to this depending on the person being asked but, from a health and wellness... or, hell, even easier, from a survival standpoint, your answers are very simple. Food, water, sleep, and shelter. Mess with not having any of those in your life and your life is going to start to suck really fast. So, why the hell do people limit food in order to lower a number on a scale? Or, why do people pretend to be too busy to sleep enough? Or, why do some people never drink water? Since most of the people reading this, I assume, are not in a third world country or in some situation where death is imminent, we can scratch the whole survival aspect of what you need. Let's get into some things that people tell you that you need but is really holding you back, making you fatter, and slowly killing you.

As opposed to a situation like this... which will quickly kill you.


Whole Grains, They're For Your Health!

I had a whole diatribe planned out to just go nuts about all of the inflammatory processes, the havoc that is wreaked on your insulin, and how bread is not a steak but, instead, I think I will just share one of the most awesome articles I have ever read (written by a very apologetic heart surgeon):

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/242516-Heart-Surgeon-Speaks-Out-On-What-Really-Causes-Heart-Disease

To sum up: the diets these medical professionals are recommending are killing you. Literally, killing you. I guess that's a little harsh. I will rephrase, these diets are making it so you need lot's of unnecessary medicines and HEART SURGERIES for the remainder of your sad, medical bill paying life.

Breakfast Is The Most Important Meal of The Day!

Here is how I start everyday:

... this really is not too far off.

A giant breakfast is the ideal way to start your day... if you want to completely destroy your insulin resistance, get fatter, be half-asleep all day, and have hormonal induced mood swings that mimic roid rage:

He just ate a stack of pancakes...

Our bodies have natural biorhythms that have evolved over thousands of years of being awesome hunter gatherer's in order to survive to now never missing an episode of "Real Slut-Wives of Plastic Face County." The biorhythms create a circadian (sleep cycle) rhythm to our hormone releases. Without getting too complicated, insulin (stores what you eat=anabolic hormone) is lowest in the morning and cortisol (breaks stuff down, makes loves handles go away=catabolic hormone) is at its highest right when you wake up. These hormones switch at in the evening (insulin high, cortisol low), around 5pm to 6pm. It would seem that a big breakfast would be a good thing because that storing, anabolic hormone is low. Well, your body doesn't work that way. Instead, a giant breakfast spikes your insulin into the stratosphere and pretty much any and all attempts to lose fat that day are out the window. So, how do you take advantage of your normal biorhythms? Here is an outline:

-Immediately upon waking, do some sort of high intensity interval training
-Nothing but coffee till noon
-No carbs until 5pm-6pm
-Eat the bulk of your calories for the day in the evening

Total opposite of everything anyone has ever said right? That's how you know it's good for you.

For more info on this kind of eating plan, check out: www.dangerouslyhardcore.com.
You're welcome.

Lifting Weights Will Make Me Too Bulky

This is more a complaint from women than men... usually. What people don't seem to understand is that to look like those 'juiced up bodybuilders' that have been training for size and eating perfect diets for most of their lives, you actually have to train for size, eat perfect, and do steroids for most of your life. Gaining some muscle is not some accidental thing. It takes a work ethic that most of our miserable genotype is not capable of. That being said, some people do swell up right when they start resitance training. This is an acute volumizing effect that resistance training (and subsequent muscle damage) causes and it goes away in a few weeks.

Intense training does more than just help you lose fat while not even at the gym (EPOC Theory... google it), over time, smashing weights for months and years actually remodels your skeletal muscle physiology to burn more fat than a normal person. This is a huge reason why Olympic sprinters are jacked and Olympic marathon runners look like, well, pretty much everybody else on Earth. I've already beat this into the ground but let's review:

Jogging uses a lot of fat for energy. When you jog more, your store more fat in order to be able to jog more. Also, as a means of energy conservation, your metabolism slows down when you aren't jogging. Which means you need to jog more to burn more fat... but then you store more when you stop. Eventually, you must never stop jogging ever.

Sprinting and high intensity exercise require being awesome. The more you do these things, the more awesome you get.

Which option sounds more appealing?


Don't believe everything you see, hear, or read... unless I wrote it, of course.

Sprint. Kill. Eat.